Case Study: Contact Centre Reduces Training Time by 50%

311 centres first started to appear in the United States about 25 years ago. This new phone line was created in an effort to divert routine enquiries and non-urgent community concerns from 911.

Since that time, citizens now need to connect through multiple and more modern channels — email, apps, websites and phones, each adding another layer of complexity.

At this 311 centre, incoming call types vary greatly, from garbage pickup and building permits, to parking tickets, animal control and graffiti. With over 400 different types of service requests to execute, agents must be highly knowledgeable on a wide range of topics.

These requirements drove the need for a lengthy 12-week long training programme that was packed full of information.

Adding to these challenges, this 311 centre was struggling to manage its information. Frequent department changes impacted how different service requests were handled, and company processes changed constantly.

It was impossible to keep up with the changes, and employees quite often were working with out-of-date information.

“This is one of the easiest products I’ve used in my call centre career and we have seen immediate improvements in the centre. It’s easy to set up, maintain and use. Our training immediately was reduced by two weeks, our agents use it every day and we have fewer errors. The staff support at ProcedureFlow is first class!”

311 Operations Manager

Given how much they were spending on training, the centre’s operations and training managers wanted to focus their efforts on reducing training time and getting their agents up to speed as fast as possible.

Leveraging ProcedureFlow, they reduced training time from 12 weeks down to 6 immediately after implementation. This transformation was also able to reduce trainer preparation time and refresher training for all employees by 50%.

With ProcedureFlow, employees had a guide for every type of scenario they would encounter with residents that gave them the confidence they needed to succeed. This contributed to an improvement in quality scores for every area that started using ProcedureFlow.

This also solved their challenge of managing information by eliminating duplication of data, and storing everything in one central location.

Each of these changes had a big impact on the centre’s operations, and in one year alone they were able to reduce their operating costs by 7.6%, a $337,000 savings. The centre is now looking for other areas of the business that can also benefit from using ProcedureFlow.

While management evaluates the next best place to implement ProcedureFlow, this 311 centre is already enjoying the many benefits:

• Training time reduced from 12 weeks to 6 weeks — a 50% reduction
• Trainer preparation and refresher training reduced by 50%
• 7.6% reduction to operating costs, $337,000 in savings
• Processes and procedures are easier to manage and can be created faster
• Procedures are mapped out in easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions, improving consistency across all agents
• Agents can reach full proficiency faster and take live calls sooner
• There are fewer support calls, and agents are meeting quality targets faster
• Response time to citizens has decreased
• Agents can provide more accurate and up-to-date information to citizens

This case study has been re-published by kind permission of ProcedureFlow – View the original post